Coyote Springs Park

Ralph and I have been enjoying our new radio activity of visiting the various local parks and operating our ham radios. The program requires one to be within the boundary of the park and then to make 10 contacts to other hams. We have both done a number of parks but they had all been done previously by others and we wanted the opportunity to be the first to activate a park. To this end Ralph and I checked over the list of local parks to see if any were waiting for their first activation. I found Coyote Springs and so our next destination was settled. Now to wait for a nice day and hope it wasn’t on the radar of another ham.

Come Friday morning the day looked good and so we decided to head out at 12:30 after a quick lunch. Ralph arrived at my place and we loaded up my wife’s EV and off we went. The park was in central Surrey so only around 15-minute drive away. There were a number of access points to the park but the western side had a grassy area that looked ideal for stretching out a radio. We drove north on 168th and then west on 80th. The park was to our north and I turned up the next side street but it was too early and so we returned to 80th and tried the next couple eventually finding the correct side street. We drove past the park grassy spot and turned around to park on the opposite side. A nice short walk across the road and into the park. 

We decided to leave our gear stowed and we set out to explore the park and select our operating positions. We followed the gravel paths around the area finding a few more grassy spots and eventually we settled on locations which should be far enough apart to reduce interference. Back at the car we loaded up my wagon and we started along the park trail. My location was first and we unloaded my gear, Ralph continued with the cart to another grassy spot 100m further along.

I set up my tripod and fishing rod mast and strung my wire antenna between it and two trees, keeping it high enough above the pathway to ensure no one got snagged by a thin wire! Then I finished attaching my KX3 radio and dialed through the band looking for a spot at which I could put out a call. As Ralph and I were both operating on the 20m band we needed the physical separation. It worked (mostly) as we did not interfere too much with each other. I could hear Ralph’s morse splatter on the band as I was searching for my spot so I assumed he was well on his way to making a high number of contacts. I selected a frequency and announced my spot on the Parks-on-the-air website. Soon I had a number of people trying to reach me and I was logging them.